Maternity leave should be scrapped as it holds back women’s progress in the
workplace, the boss of a right-wing think tank has controversially
suggested.

Sheila Lawlor, director of Politeia, said paid maternity leavewas creating a “great burden” for women and stunted their growth up the career ladder to the boardroom, as taking time out to look after children meant many mothers missed out on vital promotions and experience at work.

Small firms are also put off hiring women of childbearing age, Ms Lawlor claimed, because of the potential costs involved in paid maternity leave, so scrapping statutory paywould free up firms to recruit more people.

Writing for Telegraph Wonder Women, Ms Lawlor, said: "Maternity leave is creating a great burden on many women and businesses. The legislation puts employers off employing women. Companies are reluctant to give jobs to women of childbearing age.

"We have to abandon what is wrongly called 'family -friendly' legislation, including the sole option maternity leave.

"Most ordinary women in most ordinary jobs do badly when they take advantage of family-friendly legislation. It takes longer for them to catch up on earnings when they return and they don’t accrue pension rights while they are away."

Ms Lawlor saidmaternity leaveshould not be the sole option for mothers, who miss out on experience, pension, pay and promotion the longer they are away from the office.

"Family-friendly law is really family and female-unfriendly. Current arrangements at maternity too often lead to a downward spiral of earnings and career, a life of near dependency on the state for top-ups of one sort or another and probably an impoverished old age," she said.

She added it could take between 10 and 15 years for women who have taken time out to look after children to catch up on earnings they have missed; meaning many will never reach the boardroom.

Ms Lawlor said the EU plan to introduce mandatory quotas to get more women on boards would do nothing to feed the supply of women to the boardroom; instead governments should focus on helping women to progress up the career ladder by addressing the issue maternity leave.

Instead of maternity leave, new mothers should be offered a career-break "to coincide with their children’s early years, with retraining for work once the youngest goes to school," Ms Lawlor said.

She said: “'Family -friendly' has become a cliché for a direction of political travel, which politicians have accustomed the voters to expect. So it would be a brave politician who questioned the most well-established plank of family-friendly policy - maternity leave."

She added: "The Government must steel itself against the short-term solution and the escalating demands from the leftist lobby, including the latest EU plan for female boardroom quotas."